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The Room Next Door.

Pedro Almodóvar waited until his 23rd feature film to make his first one in English, released the same month as the Spanish director turned 75. The Room Next Door, an adaptation of part of a Sigrid Nunez novel, is an intense movie about friendship and duty, driven by two outstanding performances by Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, a sort of women-centered parallel to his 2022 film Pain & Glory. (You can rent it on iTunes, Amazon, etc.)

Ingrid (Moore) is signing copes of her latest book when an old acquaintance reaches the table and informs her that their former colleague Martha (Swinton) has cervical cancer. Ingrid visits Martha, whom she hasn’t seen in many years, and the two begin spending more time together, as Ingrid realizes Martha is quite lonely, with only an estranged daughter remaining of her family. When a promising treatment turns out to be unsuccessful, Martha decides to end her life on her own terms and asks Ingrid to accompany her to a house in the country, so that Martha knows someone who cares about her is in the room next door as she dies. Ingrid ends up agreeing, and the remainder of the film follows the two women through the last few weeks of Martha’s life.

There are only three characters of any significance in The Room Next Door, with John Turturro appearing as Martha’s former husband and Ingrid’s former lover, putting all of the pressure on Swinton and Moore to carry the film – and, naturally, two of the greatest actors of their generation are up to the task. Swinton’s performance is the more surprising of the pair’s, as she’s largely understated throughout the film; she’s played big or weird or both so often in recent years that it’s a treat to see her dial it back like this. Martha’s insecure and maybe neurotic, but resigned to her death, in contrast to Ingrid, whose latest book is about her own crippling fear of dying, and Swinton gives the character the right combination of nervous energy with a touch of irascibility. Ingrid is the more straightforward character, although Moore’s challenge is navigating the wide range of emotions she faces across the film – it’s clear at the start that she and Martha were never that close, or at least Ingrid didn’t think they were, so she ends up growing fonder of Martha as Martha’s death becomes inevitable and the favors she asks become more significant.

(As an aside, I realized after watching this that I’d never seen Michael Clayton, the 2007 film for which Swinton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress – still her only Oscar nomination – so I watched it. That performance is also quite understated, and also one of her best.)

The production itself is lavish, visually and metaphorically. Nearly every scene pops with strong, vivid colors, even more so when they head out of the city to a luxurious house in the woods, with gorgeous shots of the forest just beyond the house’s deck. Almodóvar has a long history of using red for its symbolic value; the door to Martha’s room is red, and she wears deep reds many times in the film, while the chaise longue where Ingrid usually reclines on the deck is also red, certainly an unusual color (and fabric) for outdoor furniture. (Martha lays on the green one.) There’s also a sense of wealth and even abundance throughout the film that cuts both ways –these are two privileged women who can afford to do this and, for Martha, face the potential consequences; yet the contrast between this lush setting and the inevitability of Martha’s death underscores that all the money in the world can’t change the fact that we’re mortal.

The estranged daughter does appear near the end of the film, providing a brief but somewhat telling coda that gives a little more insight into Martha’s character – and into Ingrid’s as well. We know Martha’s going to die before the end, but rather than concluding on the most morbid note, or with something clichéd like a funeral, the story ends with a conversation and a scene on the deck that connects to an earlier scene. Both scenes include passages from Joyce’s short story The Dead, while earlier Martha and Ingrid also watch John Huston’s 1987 film adaptation – laying it on a bit thick, I suppose, although it is considered one of the greatest short stories written in the English language. Almodóvar has settled into a mellower groove as he’s aged, dispensing with the sort of shocking elements that helped make his reputation as an avant-garde filmmaker while he focuses more on character development and dialogue. The Room Next Door is (at least) his third straight film in this vein, and I think it’s the best of the trio thanks to the two lead performances.

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→ April 2, 2025
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Klawchat 4/2/25.

Keith Law: My spoon is too big. Klawchat.

Dr. Bob: Thanks for continuing to do these chats here. I love The Athletic, but not its chat feature. I had a question amid the discussion about the torpedo bats. Is this going to change the definition of a barrel?
Keith Law: You’re welcome – I also don’t care for the format of TA’s chats, but I also don’t get and don’t feel like I can answer questions too far afield from baseball there, whereas here anything goes. To your question, no, I don’t think it would change the definition, but it might change the frequency of Barrels.

Smitts: How good can Casey Mize be with the arsenal he showed last night?
Keith Law: The splitter looked fantastic on tv, but he still didn’t throw a ton, and Statcast doesn’t seem to think it’s that different from 2024. I loved Mize in the draft/before he debuted and would love this to be sustainable, but I need to see more.

addoeh: When does your top 50 draft prospects ranking come out?  And still planning on your top 100 in early May?
Keith Law: Top 50 is scheduled for 4/15. And yes to the top 100.

addoeh: More surprising event in Mondays Vagabond A’s – Chicago Cubs game; Jacob Wilson first career HR or Carson Kelly hitting for the cycle?
Keith Law: Oh, Kelly by a mile. Requires four events rather than one, and that Sacramento park is probably going to be pretty power-friendly.

Aaron C.: Best tacos you’ve ever had in the *eastern* time zone and outside of your own kitchen?
Keith Law: Nuvotaco in Durham.

Guest: Jackson Merrill $135MM/9: yay all around?
Keith Law: Yep. No notes.

Heather: Did the torpedo bats injure Giancarlo Stanton, or was the perpetually injured Stanton injured while standing near a torpedo bat?  NYC needs to know!
Keith Law: Are you saying the bats … torpedoed his career?

JJ: Why is Marcelo Mayer in Worcester, and Trevor “.235 Career Hitter Away from Coors” Story in the Red Sox’ starting lineup?  When he’s not hurt, Story’s a lousy hitter.
Keith Law: I think Mayer needs AAA time and wrote as much this winter. He’ll be up soon enough.

Aaron C.: NOT asking you to name names, but have you ever scouted a kid with legitimate “make-up” concerns who went on to have an MLB career of note?
Keith Law: Yes.

Mike Trout: I saw you mention that you are also a big fan of Zone of Interest. Will you be reviewing it?
Keith Law: No, I watched it too long ago to write about it. It was the best movie I saw from 2023, though. It’s a masterpiece of subtlety. All of the evil is just outside of your view.

Finnegan: Was Roki Sasaki really one of the five best SP options for the Dodgers this spring?  I don’t understand why he’s not in Oklahoma City.
Keith Law: Who was a better option? Setting aside his experience in NPB and the hype around him, I think he was one of of their five best SP.

Richard: Baseball is back!!  Dana Brown called Cam Smith an ‘aircraft carrier,’ which I guess is good, but promoting him and immediately putting him in Right seems like a lot to handle…any concerns about long-term damage from pushing him too quickly, or could he benefit in the long run?
Keith Law: I do not like having a player play a new position as he transitions to the majors. Jackson Merrill pulled it off, if you want a counterexample.

Richard: Based on your recommendation I read Nettle and Bone and loved it! The modernization of classic fantasy road trip themes, and abundant humor were great.  Have you read any of her other work that you’d recommend (or someone doing similar things)?
Keith Law: I’m about halfway through her newest novel, A Sorceress Comes to Call, and it’s excellent. Her style reminds me of Connie Willis and Jo Walton.

Alek: This pirates rebuild has not gone according to plan. Looks to be a combo of missing on their trades (musgrove, bell, etc) and their drafted hitters underperforming (davis, gonzales, termarr) . Any other insights you’d add?
Keith Law: The thing about their drafts is that those guys were pretty much all seen as good or apt picks for where Pittsburgh took them. Davis is a special case because they did the thing I just said I hate to see – they promoted him to the majors and had him play a new position, and it seems to have derailed him completely.

Alek: I’m not sure many had Mitchell parker as being as successful as hes been, but hes pitched like a good number 5, maybe even a 4. (which is a relative win)..do you think thats about what he is?
Keith Law: He’s a 5, nothing more.

Johnny Beisbol: White Sox starting rotation has some interesting guys. Between Burke, Martin, Smith, and Cannon, who do you think has the brightest future?
Keith Law: Burke, whom I wrote a little more about last week.

Braydon: Does the top of the draft seem more uncertain this year than in recent years, or is it still too early in the process?
Keith Law: Uncertain in terms of who the players are up top, yes, for sure. Teams generally don’t know who they’re taking this far in advance, but the issue I’m having is that nobody is really a #1 prospect in this class. Lots of guys who’d be good picks at #6 and down. Every player I think could go top 5 has some significant flaw or question mark.

Dana: Is Jasson Dominguez hopeless defensively, or is he just a young player who needs more reps in LF? Yanks keep pulling him for defense in close games late.
Keith Law: Another position change guy. Even weirder because he can really play centerfield.

Insert Witty Name Here: Oh sweet, a Klawchat!  Considering how terrible our political candidates are, who do you think would/could actually do the job of POTUS and be FDR like? If you can’t think of a name, what kind of background that isn’t multiple failed businessman.
Keith Law: I don’t know that that person exists right now. FDR took office in the midst of a global depression, and thus had a lot of latitude to implement big, bold policy changes that probably wouldn’t have flown five years earlier. The New Deal was as close to socialism as the U.S. has ever gotten; can you imagine the reaction today if President Walz or Ocasio-Cortez proposed the WPA and CCC?

Jay: Rafael Devers — some say the switch from 3B to DH is too much of a mental adjustment, and messing with his mind.  Others say the four week staycation he took in lieu of participating in spring training games threw off his timing at the plate.  Where do you stand?
Keith Law: Would guess the latter. Also it’s a tiny sample.

Alek: A month after your first rankings, Still have Doyle at number 1? Any other big movers lately?
Keith Law: I haven’t re-ranked anyone yet … I’ve started working on the top 50, of course, but it’s preliminary.

Jeremy: Nick Gonzalez has a fractured ankle. Adam Frazier is now essentially the starting second baseman and is batting lead off today while Nick Horne is in AAA Indianapolis. That is insane, right?
Keith Law: Yeah, I don’t get it. Perfect opportunity to bring Yorke back to the majors.

JTW: Do you still vote for the Hall of Fame?  Just curious.  When I look at guys like Billy Wagner, Dave Parker, Dick Allen, and Harold Baines going in these days, I’m assuming the requirements have changed, and that everyone who actually plays ten full seasons is now guaranteed eventual enshrinement.  Wait by your phone, Matt Stairs!
Keith Law: I do. I don’t think I’ve moved the bar as much as those ridiculous committees, where people just vote for their friends.

J-Train: Would you ever consider annualizing a player’s 2020 stats to make a HOF argument?
Keith Law: Absolutely not.

Sean M.: Now that the universe has given them what they deserve with a pick at 7 instead of 1, what is the best case scenario for the Marlins at that pick?
Keith Law: Way too soon to answer that. There are plenty of good players for the 7th pick.

Eric: The Blue Jays have started Will Wagner, 5 of the first 6 games. Are you as optimistic about his future as productive player as they seem to be?
Keith Law: I don’t think he’s a long-term regular.

Martin: Do you think this idea is or could be true?: “Clutchness” in the sense of “avoiding performance degradation under pressure” is an actual skill, but it’s not a real-world differentiator between MLB players because essentially everyone in MLB has it. If you can’t handle pressure, you likely wouldn’t make it to MLB.
Keith Law: This has been my argument for forever. Same with lineup protection: I’m sure it exists in high school; it may exist in college or the low minors; we know it doesn’t exist in the majors (or its effect is too small to capture).

Bobby Digital: Did you ever think you’d see a petty, perpetually aggrieved billionaire literally handing out giant checks in the hopes that people would a) like him and b) vote in a way that makes it easier for him to game the system?
Keith Law: I did not. Looking back, I’ve been too naive about just how harmful Citizens United has been. It’s destroyed our democracy in ways that I don’t think can be repaired.

JR: I’m not as fast of a reader as you, but often take down suggestions from you and read books in order of my list. Meaning, this year I’ve read both Minotaur takes a cigarette break and smoke. Both have had sequels come out since you reviewed them, lol. Any plans to read? Assuming you were aware sequels existed?
Keith Law: I was not! Will definitely read the Minotaur sequel.

Paul: Have you had a chance to check out “The Studio”? I liked the first two eps.
Keith Law: No, other than Adolescence I’ve been all movies this month. Was going to watch White Lotus next, but after reading how they cut a reference to Carrie Coon’s character having a trans or NB child after Trump was elected, I lost interest. Straight-up obeying in advance there.

Ben: Nominating JB Pritzker for closest FDR analogue.  Very rich, a surprisingly compelling speaker, and a former governor who both seems to have fun with politics and be good at the management aspect.  Illinois loves its big boy governor.
Keith Law: And he’s been pretty fearless so far about speaking his mind and speaking out against the Administration. Assuming we’re allowed to vote for anything in 2028, the best candidate will be someone who never bent the knee.

Henry: Can we just indoctrinate small sample size for everything in MLB until at least June, and encourage folks to read Smart Baseball?
Keith Law: I’m on board with that. Was hoping Cory Booker would start reading from it during his speech to fill some time.

Guest: Do you think we’ll see Nick Kurtz called up by the All-Star break?
Keith Law: Honestly don’t know the answer to that. This year, sure.

Lark11: Have you read any books by Lauren Groff? I was pretty damn impressed by The Vaster Wilds
Keith Law: Fates & Furies and Florida. That might be it?
Keith Law: Liked both, though.

Lark11: Has Ben Rice taken a legitimate step forward? Can he be a full-time starter in MLB? A true impact hitter? Thanks!!
Keith Law: No.

How is it done: You do a lot of board game reviews- how many hours a week would you say you spend on playing/writing about games? How about how many hours on watching/writing/analyzing baseball?
Keith Law: That answer would vary widely based on time of year. I’ve barely done anything game-related in the last month because I’ve been traveling so much. The two reviews I posted at Paste were written before March even began, because I knew what was coming.

Ice: I did a Val Kilmer search on your site this morning and saw the only movie review where he was mentioned was for KKBB. Any other of his films that you liked/didn’t like?
Keith Law: Top Secret is an all-time favorite. It doesn’t hold up that well today overall, but there are some timeless jokes in there.
Keith Law: As soon as I saw he’d died, “Skeet Surfin'” popped into my head.

Jim Walewander: For decades, the Tigers did not prioritize the minor leagues or the international market.

Now, seemingly overnight, everything this front office and coaching staff touches turns to gold.

How much credit goes to Scott Harris & Co., versus Hinch, Fetter and the coaching staff?
Keith Law: I think you can spread the credit around. They’ve drafted substantially better since Mark Conner took over as Scouting Director, and I had a pro scout who’s covered them for a while tell me this winter that they have made a 180 in terms of developing players – it went from guys failing to develop at all or up to their potential to guys developing beyond expectations all over the place. Kevin McGonigle might be the best example right now.

Chris: Keith, if you were the GM, how would you solve the Red Sox’ looming need to get Roman Anthony at bats in the big leagues? Should they trade Abreu or move Duran to CF and Rafaela to the bench?
Keith Law: Rafaela’s the odd man out, right? 80 defense won’t carry a .270 OBP. And Statcast has his defense at -2 runs through 5 games!

Matt: At what point do you start to give weight to velo bumps in pitching prospects? Is there a certain workload you want to see them hit before you buy in?
Keith Law: A fair question but I don’t have a specific answer in innings or games. I don’t buy into a single outing, though, especially early in the year when guys are typically not asked to work as deep into games as they are in May or June.

Mike: What do you think of the Angels promoting so aggressively?. Do you think the apparent successes get too much attention compared to players who might be handicapped by that? I’m wondering specifically about Nelson Rada, who doesn’t seem like he’s gotten comfortable at any level he’s played.
Keith Law: I’m not in favor of it. I’m glad Rada isn’t in AAA yet, because he is absolutely not ready, and sending a kid who needs to work on things like pitch recognition to the western part of the PCL with all its parks at altitude is not going to help him one iota. Neto’s been a success for their practice of pushing guys quickly … and that’s it, right?

NL1992: Do you think scouting skills are transferable across sports? Are there other sports where you think you could potentially hang or are particularly clueless?
Keith Law: I think it would take me years and years to figure out what to do in another sport. So much of what scouts do is based on their body of knowledge accumulated over the course of a career – of learning from mistakes, of picking up on patterns or subtle cues in players, etc. I sometimes see a player and know he reminds me of someone else (or several someone elses) but can’t quite put my finger on why. I just go with it, either way, because clearly my brain is seeing some pattern there even if I can’t articulate it.

Jm: Seeing the Cubs feast on Sacramento pitching, is run differential kind of a sham? More runs in two games than the other six combined doesn’t really tell you about their bad hitting
Keith Law: Run differential in a tiny sample is useless.

nelson: how good is schwellenbach?
Keith Law: Maybe a #2 starter?
Keith Law: I’m a big fan, to be clear. It was always about health & his ability to handle a starter’s workload (he was a SS/closer in college, like Shaun Marcum).

Jm: Any good non fiction book recos?
Keith Law: I had to go to my spreadsheet to see what non-fiction I’ve read recently and it’s not that many – only two this year, one of which, Dr. Ellen Hendriksen’s How to Be Enough, I liked a ton, but bear in mind I know her a bit so there’s some bias there. From last year, Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars was probably the best non-fiction book I read. I didn’t realize I’d been so fiction-heavy the last 15 months or so.

Mike: followup on the Angels – Ben Joyce was pretty good last year in a fairly small number of innings. Do you think the Angels think Schanuel has been a success?
Keith Law: Joyce was a college senior with a crimson-red flag on him in the injury department. Kind of a different story.
Keith Law: Like, you are insane to waste that kid’s bullets in the minors.

Tom: Do scouts attempt to scout knuckleballers or is that world just a total guessing game?
Keith Law: I wouldn’t know where to start. And there are so few anyway that it has never come up in my career. Which is a shame, because they’re awesome.

Mike: Should Mason Montgomery ever try starting again?
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Jm: In what world does starting Biggio at 1B make sense? Surely there are other players who can actually hit the ball they could have there
Keith Law: None. You know my opinion on him. Had his one moment in the sun – mostly when the competition was deflated – and then the league figured him out.

Paul: What would be your breaking point for leaving the US? As someone who is lucky enough to have dual citizenship, I have been debating whether or not I am better off raising my family abroad despite all the difficulty that would entail.
Keith Law: If I thought my safety or that of anyone in my family was at risk, I’d try to leave. That’s more likely for the women in my house than it is for me – they’re losing rights much faster than men are. The SAVE act is trying to destroy women’s right to vote.

Guest: Spring training and early results aside, does Leiter’s stuff look better?
Keith Law: He’s throwing harder, but that doesn’t really address the problem of the four-seamer being too straight and hittable – it’s moving less than it did last year. But he’s throwing a sinker more than he did last year, and that could be the entire key for him. His other stuff is fine. Hitters really enjoyed his fastball too much. Like the way I enjoy pizza. It’s not what you want.

Guest: Love the Don Hertzfeldt reference. I am a banana!
Keith Law: I just wish my cable company carried the Family Learning Channel.

Jm: Elon isn’t handing out checks. He’s giving them to republican donors and operatives
Keith Law: Which, as I understand it, is illegal, and yet somehow he is not facing any sort of legal threats!

JR: Men’s college football and basketball has been wild to follow of late. The free transfers and NIL give us a idea of what it would be like if every MLB player was a free agent every year. Would every player being on a one year contract be healthy for the game?
Keith Law: I don’t think that’s a clear yes/no answer, is it? Imagine the excitement every winter when teams scrambled to fill out their rosters!

Mike Trout: What is your take on the democrats potentially adopting “abundance?”
Keith Law: I truly don’t know enough about this to comment, sorry.

DNL: If you were to leave the United States, where would you go? It’s not clear that other nations would accept us as immigrants.
Keith Law: I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.

Saxton: Kristian Campbell just extended 8 years plus 2 club options. Think Boston will be able to get deals done with Anthony and Mayer as well?
Keith Law: He’d probably be the easiest of the three as he’s the oldest and didn’t come into the majors with the same expectations.

Zirinsky: Hi Keith. What’s the rationale behind your notion that Rice isn’t a regular? Lack of defense or something in his hitting that you think will be exposed?
Keith Law: The swing.
Keith Law: And he has no position.
Keith Law: He was awful in the majors last year at 25. What’s the argument that he’s not that guy any more? 10 at bats?

Breslow: Campbell just signed an eight-year deal with the Red Sox. Good idea to lock him up for that long?
Keith Law: As with Merrill, seems good for both sides. Teams take on some risk now in the hopes of severely underpaying the players down the road; the players are set for life.

Tim: Lab leak still a failed theory?
Keith Law: Yep. Evidence just keeps piling up against it.

NL1992: Have you read Paul Murray’s ‘The Bee Sting’?
Keith Law: No, hadn’t heard of it till now. I have a pretty high bar to read anything over 500 pages, though. I’ve loved some super-long novels, for sure, but that is a long time for any work to hold my attention.

DNL: If you were managing the Mets, how would you divide playing time at 2B between Brett Baty and Luisangel Acuna
Keith Law: Can Baty really play second? I’d be surprised, and I say that as someone who’s always argued Baty was better at 3b than people thought.

Chris: Is there a point to having Rice play full time while Stanton is out to see if he can hit lefties rather than keep giving Grisham pointless playing time and stunting Jasson?
Keith Law: You know what I’m going to say – you figure out where Dominguez needs to be, for the team and for his own development, and go from there.

A Man Named Dan: Does the Mets rotation have enough talent to keep them in contention this year?
Keith Law: Sure, if they’re healthy.

JTW: Just watched “Anora” last week.  I read your review this morning, and think you liked it a bit more than I did.  My question:  don’t you think a “Best Picture” winner should be more … “substantial”, for lack of a better word?  When I think “Best Picture”, I think “Godfather” or “Ben Hur”.  “Anora” struck me as another in a string of forgettable winners.  Maybe I’m just getting old.
Keith Law: I don’t agree with that philosophy – it sounds a bit too much like you’re saying a film has to be “important,” rather than simply the best-made film of the year. That almost completely excludes comedies and musicals, and will tend to favor longer films or films that tackle Big Topics like racism or sexism. Now, if you want to argue that Nickel Boys was a more serious film about a more serious topic and was just as well-made as Anora, I won’t fight you. Nickel Boys at least deserved a lot more love at awards ceremonies. The two biggest snubs in the Oscar nominations were Nickel Boys in Cinematography and Reznor/Ross in Original Score (for Challengers).
Keith Law: The Academy did well with the winners, but man, they whiffed on the nominations. The Apprentice? Really??

romorr: How much longer would you try McDermott as a starter? If it’s August, and he’s still walking 12% to 14%, and the pen needs help in Baltimore, do you make the move? Try and start him again in 2026?
Keith Law: Sure, why not? You’re trying to win – you use older prospects like him however they can help the team.

DNL: Are you a Star Trek fan? If so, any thoughts on the Paramount+ shows to date?
Keith Law: I bet I’d enjoy some of them, but I haven’t watched anything Star Trek related in probably 25 years. I watched the entire original series as a kid, and saw most if not all of TNG in college or shortly afterwards. There are still some TNG episodes I can picture like it was yesterday, including the finale. (Never liked Q that much, though. Kind of wore on me after the first appearance.) As with all the Star Wars series, though, I’m overwhelmed by all of the content and end up not watching any. (I did watch S1/S2 of The Mandalorian and S1 of The Bad Batch. Enjoyed both.)

Chris: Wanted to add I also enjoyed Roadhouse more than a lot of other pointless remakes like Gladiator II (which lets be honest was that and not a sequel).  Jake almost always brings the goods.
Keith Law: I watched Gladiator in the fall to prepare to watch the new one … and then realized it was basically a remake that nobody liked as much as the original.

Heather: If Giancarlo Stanton can overcome his allergic reaction to the torpedo bats, is he a HOFer in your eyes?  He had four or five excellent years (I believe all in Miami), but he’s turned into Dave Kingman for the last half decade.
Keith Law: That’s an interesting question, more so than I thought at first glance. B-R has him at 45 WAR, which is low, but would be far from the lowest in the Hall for a position player. (He’s well over the Baines Line.) It’s really a peak argument: 33 WAR in his best 7-year stretch, one MVP and one runner-up. Jay Jaffe’s JAWS seems to have him too far on the outside, so guessing right now, if Stanton retired today, I’d be a ‘no.’ It’s a good one, though.

Jm: You should watch Andor. Best tv of last five years
Keith Law: I feel like that would be the one to watch, no? I did watch one episode of The Book of Boba Fett and had a sinking feeling that the rest of the series were just going to be low-effort series to capitalize on the popularity of The Mandalorian. I think Marvel’s kind of done the same.
Keith Law: OK that’s all for this week, but I’ll try to do these more regularly now that the season’s rolling and my travel isn’t going to be nearly as heavy as it was in March. Thank you all for reading and for your questions!

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→ April 2, 2025
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Music update, March 2025.

That was one of the worst months for new music I can recall – I had to stretch a little just to get this playlist to a sufficient length to post it. I figured waiting until the end of April would produce something too long to deal with, though. As always, you can access the playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Courting – Namcy. The new album is called Lust for Life, Or: ‘How to Thread the Needle and Come Out the Other Side to Tell the Story’. It’s really good, though. Maybe not quite up to 2024’s New Last Name, but still very strong, likely to be one of my favorite albums of 2025 when we get there, with this, “Pause at You,” and “After You” all strong (they were the three singles, too). The whole album is only 25:40, though. At what point is it just an EP?

Sunflower Bean – Nothing Romantic. Sunflower Bean started out as a post-punk/new wave band, shifted into more college-radio rock on their last two albums, had a hit with “Moment in the Sun,” and their newest album appears to be almost hard rock, with distorted guitars and lots of minor chords. I’ve liked all of the singles from their new album, Mortal Primetime, due out April 25th, and this might have the best hook of them all.

Anxious – Audrey Go Again. Anxious’ latest album, Bambi, holds serve rather than pushing forward, with the Connecticut emo rockers – I mean, at this point, is it post-emo? Second-wave emo? – trying some different modes, like on this largely acoustic ballad, although they haven’t abandoned their typical sound with tracks like “Never Said” and “Counting Sheep.”

Swervedriver – The World’s Fair. Swervedriver released an EP, also called The World’s Fair, last month, their first new music since 2019’s Future Ruins LP. It’s a softer side of the band, whose 1990s heyday saw a heavier sounds full of swirling guitars, although the psychedelic elements are still evident here.

Greentea Peng – Nowhere Man. Peng had been AWOL since the summer of 2022, but put out two singles at the end of last year and dropped her second full-length album, Tell Dem It’s Sunny, on March 21st. It’s a more mature sound, with stronger lyrics, along with vocals that lean more into the neo-soul part of her sound; on her first album, she often sounded like she was posturing, and I don’t get that sense from this record. Some other standout tracks include “One Foot” and “Stones Throw.”

clipping. – Dominator. Dead Channel Sky, clipping.’s second album, is a whole project, twenty songs including various interludes, shifting sounds and styles, and it’s one of the most interesting and challenging records I’ve heard in the last few years. I think that’s a good thing; Daveed Diggs’ verbal gymnastics carry them through on several tracks where the industrial backing music doesn’t land.


Freddie Gibbs – Nobody. This is unusually accessible for Gibbs, but remains a superb showcase for his skill as a lyricist and rapper; he’s one of the best on the mic right now for flow and style, and he can work over a piano track like this one and still sound hard.

Tunde Adebimpe – God Knows. Adebimpe’s solo debut, Thee Black Boltz, comes out on April 18th; the TV on the Radio singer has put out three singles so far, and this is the weakest one, unfortunately.

Preoccupations – Bastards. These post-punk Canucks have been at it since 2012, and they’ve always hewed pretty closely to the standard sound of that genre – some of their tracks could easily have been recorded in 1983, given their adherence to the production style and sound of that era. This track seems like a departure for them, as the production is more modern, and much softer, which gives a whole new aspect to their songwriting. Their fifth album Ill At Ease comes out on May 9th.

Black Honey – Psycho. A little chill for Black Honey, who’ve churned out scads of pop bangers over the last decade or so (“Hello Today,” “Midnight,” “Somebody Better,” “All My Pride,” “I Like the Way You Die,” “Run for Cover,” “Back of the Bar,” “Out of My Mind”), still catchy but not up to their usual standard. It looks like this is a one-off single ahead of a spring tour.

OVERSIZE – Are You With Me? This English quintet delivers straight-up classic shoegaze circa 1993 on their debut album, Vital Signs, an album that I think works better as a full listen because, consistent with that subgenre, they’re creating a whole wall of sound. This was the best track I could pull out to include on the playlist.

Hotwax – Strange to Be Here. This trio from Hastings, England, just released their debut album Hot Shock; I’ve seen them labelled as “grunge” in multiple reviews, but they’re grunge like Hole was grunge, which is to say they might have shown up adjacent to grunge but that’s not really their sound. It’s messy, often loud, guitar-driven rock, reminiscent of Hole and Babes in Toyland.

YHWH Nailgun – Castrato Raw (Fullback). And you thought Courting’s album was short: YHWH Nailgun’s debut album, 45 Pounds, runs just 21:04. I get that in the streaming era, album length doesn’t carry the same weight as it did when we were talking physical media and labels were asking $15 for anything called a full-length album. This isn’t an album, though. It’s a chapbook. For Christ’s sake, this is a mixtape, not the stuff marketed as such. But despite all of that, 45 Pounds is a weird, compelling listen. It’s driven by the percussion, including the use of rototoms, which allow drummer Sam Pickard to change the pitch of each drum by rotating it. It’s music, but it’s not very musical – the drums take over the record, which isn’t a bad thing by any means, meaning that there are just snippets of other instruments and singer Zack Borzone’s quiet, guttural vocals. Whether you like it or not, 45 Pounds will be one of the most unusual records you hear this year.

feeble little horse – This Is Real. This Pittsburgh noise-rock band is new to me, although they’ve been recording since 2021 and have released two albums. This song, which jams four distinct movements into a barely three-minute run time, is their first new track since their last album and a brief hiatus that saw them cancel their 2023 tour.

Greenleaf – Vat 69. I’d never heard of Greenleaf until this week, as the band reissued their 2001 album Revolution Rock with six bonus tracks. I’m annoyed that I wasn’t familiar with them before, as this album hits my particular nostalgia for this sort of hard-rock vibe.

Witchcraft – Drömmar av is. Witchcraft is a Swedish hard-rock band with doom elements to their music, although I wouldn’t call them straight doom-metal; they’ve been around since 2000 and their upcoming album Idag will be just their fifth. Their 2012 album Legend is their best to date, especially the first track, “Deconstruction,” which starts out a bit Sabbath-y before going full Iron Maiden after about a minute. This is the second track they’ve released from the upcoming album, and it’s better than the first, “Burning Cross.”

Planning for Burial – A Flowing Field of Green. Planning for Burial is one guy, Thom Wasluck, who not only plays all of the instruments on his records, he plays everything in live shows too. I don’t know how that works and, you know, it’s okay to work with other people. I thought Kevin Parker’s schtick was bad enough. Anyway, I happen to love the way this post-metal track builds up a sense of impending doom, and then delivers it in the back half.

Hesse Kassel – Postparto. Hesse Kassel is a progressive shoegaze band from Chile that just self-released their first album, La Brea, with tracks running from 6 to 13 minutes. The whole affair is 78 minutes long, or more than three times the length of Courting’s new album. Anyway, La Brea is fascinating, even if I can’t tell you if I like it yet.

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→ April 1, 2025
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American Fiction.

American Fiction is the first film adaptation of any of Percival Everett’s thirty novels, although its resounding success means it won’t be the last – an adaptation of James is already in the works (good!) with Taika Waititi possibly directing (so very, very bad). Directed by Cord Jefferson, who won the Oscar for his screenplay, the film adheres quite closely to the novel, which was called Erasure, until the very end, when Jefferson takes some creative license that pokes a little fun at Everett’s own ending but doesn’t entirely stick its metafictional landing. (It’s streaming free on Amazon Prime or you can rent it on iTunes.)

Once again, we meet Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a professor and author of arcane novels that don’t sell, here in a new scene where he lashes out at a performatively offended white student in one of his classes, leading his employers to put him on leave. He travels to New York to meet with his agent, and to visit his aging mother (Lesley Uggams) and his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), a doctor who provides reproductive health services. His mother is showing early signs of dementia, while we learn that his relationship with Lisa and their brother Bill (Sterling K. Brown) has always been distant. While traveling, he comes across a bestselling novel, We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, by Black author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), an Oberlin graduate who has written a book that Monk thinks panders to white guilt, engaging in gross and dated stereotypes about Black Americans. Lisa dies very early in the film, in one of the most significant alterations from Erasure, and when their mother clearly needs to enter assisted living, Monk suddenly has some significant financial issues. He sits down and writes a novel, My Pafology, that parodies Golden’s book and the benevolent racism of the publishing industry, intending (he says) to offend the editors who receive it. Instead, he gets a seven-figure bonus (25% higher than the figure in the book, which was written 25 years ago) and everyone wants to meet the fictitious author Stagg R. Leigh, whom Monk invents as he goes along. As his personal life becomes more difficult, the book becomes more successful, until he finds himself on the judging panel for the Literary Award … and his book is one of the leading candidates.

Jefferson does a fantastic job weaving the twin narratives of the book – the family subplot and the Pafology subplot – together in a way that feels fluid, since he lacks the natural transitions that come with chapter breaks, and the two only truly intersect a few times in the novel. He’s kept the bones of the plot and most of the details are the same, although he changes a few character names (including Adam Brody’s movie producer) and creates some overly dramatic scenes involving Monk’s mother. There are also more outright laughs here than in the source, and the relationships between Monk and his two siblings are softened, which allows some fantastic scenes between Wright and Brown later in the film.

Wright is spectacular here – this is a well-written, three-dimensional character, and Wright just is Monk. He inhabits this character in every way, and when Monk has to act as Stagg, Wright telegraphs not just his discomfort at playing “Black,” but that this character was raised to not speak or act a certain way, leaving him flummoxed when he has to become Stagg R. Leigh on the phone and once in person. He’s just as strong in the family scenes, showing how Monk struggles with his interpersonal relationships even with people he clearly cares about; he doesn’t lack empathy or feelings, but – forgive the hackneyed phrase – sometimes he can’t get out of his own way. Brown and Uggams are also excellent in their respective roles, with Brown, like Wright, earning an Oscar nomination for this performance; Uggams probably just doesn’t get enough screen time to say she was robbed of a Best Supporting Actress nod – I don’t think she passes the Judi Dench Barrier here – but she’s superb in the limited time she gets, as is Erika Alexander as Monk’s love interest, Coraline.

I wasn’t bothered by Jefferson sharpening some of the edges and inserting some extra drama; Brody’s movie producer character even says in the film at one point that a movie made from a novel can’t be the novel, because you just don’t have enough time, and I think that can also apply to character development. Even changing the manner of Lisa’s death makes sense, because what happens in the book is tied to something larger that the movie would simply not have time to address, at least not in a satisfying fashion.

The ending, however … I will concede the argument that the book ends in a way that would probably not work on film. The movie might not even get made. I liked the ending of Erasure, but it’s unconventional, and would have been even more so in a movie. Jefferson’s solution is creative, certainly, but I’m not sure it works. Metafictional twists like that one are hard to pull off, and if you start thinking about this one, you’ll probably end up with a headache. The final, final shot, though, is excellent, so maybe it’s best to just not ponder the climax too thoroughly. Adapting a book as rich and sardonic as Erasure could not have been easy, and Jefferson managed to get the tone right without having to make any significant changes to the meat of the novel.

I’ve seen nine of the ten movies that were nominated for Best Picture in this year, and I’d put American Fiction pretty comfortably in the middle of the group. The Zone of Interest, which I didn’t see until November of last year and never wrote up, would be my top choice, and I wouldn’t put this over Past Lives or Oppenheimer, but it’s in the next tier with Barbie and The Holdovers for me. Wright never had a chance to beat Cillian Murphy for Best Actor, but if this movie were going to win any award for anything, he would have been my pick.

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→ March 31, 2025
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Erasure.

Erasure was Percival Everett’s breakthrough novel, the twelfth one he published but the first to gain widespread acclaim and attention – ironic, in a small way, as it is in part a novel about the conflict between art and commerce, the need to create against the need to make a buck. Adapted into 2023’s Oscar-winning film American Fiction, Erasure is a masterpiece of biting, humorous satire, a work that holds up twenty years later in a world that hasn’t actually changed that much from the one in which it’s set.

Thelonious Ellison, known to friends and acquaintances as Monk, is a professor of literature and an author of inscrutable, dense novels that don’t sell. He lives in Los Angeles, far from his aging mother and sister Lisa, the latter of whom provides reproductive health services, including abortions, at her clinic in or outside D.C. Their brother Bill, who recently came out as gay, lives in Arizona; Bill and Lisa are close, but Monk is distant from both of them, and was their late father’s favorite in their telling.

Monk is appalled to find that a novel called We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, written by a Black woman named Juanita Mae Jenkins, has become a critical and commercial success by pandering to white people’s sterotypes of Black America – even though Jenkins herself grew up privileged and the stories within the book aren’t hers. In his indignation over Jenkins’s success, and facing a sudden need to help pay for his mother to enter a memory-care facility, Monk writes a pandering novel of his own called My Pafology, submitting it under the pseudonym Stagg R. Lee. To his surprise, and his agent’s, the book sells immediately, and suddenly Monk has a Springtime for Hitler-like smash on his hands – and eventually ends up faced with the potential that he might win the Literary Award, a National Book Award-like honor for which Monk is also one of the judges.

Erasure is a masterpiece. It’s bursting with different themes and potential interpretations; Monk is a wonderfully complex and three-dimensional character; Everett balances his protagonist’s difficult personal life against the madness of his commercial breakthrough. It’s a satire of the publishing industry, sure, but Everett’s eye is much more on the white-savior racism of publishing and later Hollywood, and how Black creators are happy to contribute to it if it makes them rich. My Pafology, which Monk later retitles to something else I won’t spoil, has Black poverty, absentee fathers, guns, drugs, promiscuity, and the other requirements of white-published Black literature of the time, all written in a parody of AAVE that flies right over every white reader’s heads … but Monk is appalled to find that there’s a Black audience for the book as well, with an Oprah-like TV host also praising both his book and Jenkins’s for their realism and authenticity.

Everett’s biting wit and sense of irony are in top form here, with humor both from the repartee between Monk and some of the other characters and from the situations Monk encounters in the publishing side of the story. These characters are all intelligent, so the dialogue is sharp and often extremely funny, especially between Monk and Bill. The entire farcical plot line of the book becoming a sensation when Monk didn’t think any publisher would want it – and his agent refuses at first to even submit it to publishers – provides a natural “and of course that happened next” subtext that’s more facepalm-funny than the laugh-out-loud kind. The white critics on the Literary Award panel might seem a little overdrawn, but a look at the novels that have won the major U.S. literary prizes in the last fifteen or so years only underlines Everett’s point – if anything, he predicted this shift towards awarding fiction that critics think is Very Important, which isn’t to say they’re picking the wrong books but that the’ve gone from one type of bias in the selection process to another.

The farce of My Pafology is a stark contrast to the second story within Erasure, that of Monk’s family and his difficulty maintaining strong interpersonal relationships. He learns early in the book that his mother has Alzheimer’s, while there’s another death in the family around the same point in the story, both of which serve to push him to write the pandering novel, but also create new situations where he has to confront some of his past choices to remain separate from his family, which includes Lorraine, who has been the Ellisons’ housekeeper since Monk and his siblings were little. Everett also gives Monk a romantic subplot when he connects with someone who lives near their family beach house, but after the initial sparks cool off, Monk finds himself in familiar waters, erecting new boundaries and holding himself apart from – or perhaps just above – his new girlfriend. It might have felt leaden if it weren’t all set against a ridiculous parallel plot where Monk has fallen into a big pile of money and the potential for fame he doesn’t want.

This all has to come to a head at some point, and Everett lands in a perfect spot, avoiding the sentimental conclusion (which would be so unlike him) while also choosing not to give Monk some horrific Tony Last-style resolution. I imagine the end won’t satisfy everyone, but this is probably the best path out of the story Everett could have written.

Is this Everett’s best novel of the five I’ve read? I’ve been pondering that since I finished the book on Friday. Every one of those books has been so different than the others that comparisons seem foolish; James somehow seems like the strongest work because of the restrictions that come with writing within another person’s work, while Erasure is more precise in its construction, and has the benefit of humor.

As for the film, I’ll review that next.

Next up: T. Kingfisher’s A Sorceress Comes to Call, already nominated for this year’s Nebula Award.

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→ March 30, 2025
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Stick to baseball, 3/30/25.

For subscribers to the Athletic, I posted my annual just-for-fun predictions column and a roundup of a few prospects I saw on the back fields in Florida this week. I also put together a post (with my editor’s help) with the preseason scouting reports and a sentence or two on the 2025 outlook for all top 100 & just missed guys who made Opening Day rosters.

At Paste, I reviewed the Ticket to Ride legacy game, Legends of the Old West, which is one of the best legacy games I’ve tried. It’s true to the original game and doesn’t load it up with too many new rules or twists (there are some, of course).

I appeared on NBC News This Morning and NPR’s All Things Considered on Thursday to discuss Opening Day and the upcoming MLB season; I was also on CNN that evening but I don’t think it’s online. I also discussed the Guardians on WHBC 1480.

And now, the links…

  • Hamilton Nolan writes in his Substack that the federal government is going to destroy labor unions if we don’t stop them, after Trump signed an executive order (which, to be clear, is just that, not a law) saying the federal government won’t recognize the unions that represent most of its employees.
  • Republicans in North Carolina continue their legal fight to steal a state Supreme Court seat, arguing that the right to vote is not absolute as they try to invalidate over 65,000 votes.
  • Mathematicians solved another century-old puzzle, this one on whether you can divide a triangle into fewer than four pieces and assemble those into a square. The answer is that you can’t – four is the lowest number.
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→ March 29, 2025
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Florida eats, 2025 edition.

Atmosphere Pizzeria is located in a strip mall in Sarasota and looks like absolutely nothing from the outside – I wasn’t sure I was even in the right place – but this is real Neapolitan pizza. They ferment their dough over three days, and the oven is right there in the front of the bare-bones restaurant. The menu has a variety of red and white pizzas; I went with the red one with mozzarella di bufala, mushrooms, basil, and prosciutto di Parma. The dough and the prosciutto were the stars here; there’s a ton of air in the dough and the texture is almost exactly what you’d find in Italy, while the prosciutto is sliced to order and is almost translucently thin. The pizza itself actually needed a little salt, and I think it was because the mushrooms weren’t seasoned – they were clearly cooked before they went on the pizza, as they have to be, since the 90 seconds or so that it takes to cook a Neapolitan pizza isn’t enough to extract the water from a sliced mushroom, let alone cook it. Whenever I go back, I might just go for the margherita and let the dough carry the day.

Sage Biscuit Café seemed to be the best-regarded breakfast spot in Bradenton, and, I mean, it has “biscuit” in the name … but I can make a better biscuit than that. This was more like a scone, really, crumbly and dry. I give them credit for cooking the eggs somewhere close to over medium and erring more on the easy side than the overdone side.

Orange Blossom Café looks like a disaster for coffee, since you walk in and it seems to be about everything but coffee. They use beans from Banyan Roasters, however, which is probably the best local roaster in this part of Florida, and have two varieties available in airports, a medium roast and a dark one. Banyan has a shop here but it was well out of my way, the opposite of the way I needed to go on my way to IMG.

Indigenous comes up on any list of the best restaurants in the Sarasota area, and they’re particularly known for their fresh fish dishes, which change daily based on what comes into the kitchen; their parmiggiano beignets; and their mushroom soup. I ordered the beignets, and then chose the lentil-mushroom Bolognese with pappardelle after asking the server whether she’d go with that or the red snapper. The beignets were excellent, if a touch greasy, but the Bolognese was disappointing on two levels. The obvious one is that the pasta was overcooked. The pappardelle itself was rolled too thinly, but it was well beyond al dente, to the point that the ribbons were coming apart as I picked them up with my fork. The less obvious one is that, at least in my opinion, pappardelle isn’t ideal for a chunky, heart sauce like Bolognese – real, which would contain pork and veal, or imitation like this one. Thick ribbons can stand up to the thickness of the sauce, but the ribbons aren’t really capable of picking up all of the bits in the sauce, whether they’re lentils and finely diced vegetables or ground meats. I haven’t made the dish in ages, but I’d opt for something like rigatoni or conchiglie, something that can trap the sauce so you can easily get both pasta and sauce in each bite. That’s not a universal opinion – pappardelle with Bolognese is a common combination – and maybe I wouldn’t have minded if this was thicker and not overcooked.

ofKors is a Ukrainian-owned bakery in downtown Sarasota that serves filled crepes, bagels, and a massive assortment pastries along with espresso drinks. The bagels looked promising – obviously looks can deceive, even in food, but you can usually spot a round-bread imitation with a little experience – and this was about as good a bagel as you’re going to find outside of greater New York. They cook the eggs to order on the crepe maker, which was kind of mesmerizing to watch (I was sure it was all going to run off the sides, but I shouldn’t have doubted the woman working the station, she’s a professional). I don’t know where they get the smoked salmon, but I’m guessing it’s a local vendor – it was excellent, with a soft texture and pronounced smoke flavor. I didn’t get coffee there because I wanted to go back to Perq, where I hadn’t been since before the pandemic; they were clearly understaffed that day, so it wasn’t quite up to my memories of the place, but the coffee itself is still excellent. I’m usually a macchiato fan, but I wanted to stick to the listed options because they were so harried (I wonder if someone called in sick), so I ordered a Gibraltar, which is basically a cortado but British.

Pangea Alchemy Lab is a tiny cocktail bar accessible from an alley just south of Main Street in Sarasota, and it’s fantastic, exactly what I want in a cocktail bar – it’s small, intimate, with a small menu of custom cocktails and riffs on classics, with a well-stocked bar of liquors and liqueurs. The custom cocktail list changes seasonally; when I visited, there were two rum drinks on the menu, and I tried both, naturally. The first had Brugal 1888, a double-aged rum (meaning it’s aged in two types of casks) from the Dominican Republic, with Licor 43 and cocoa bitters. The second was their riff on a Maitai, but much less sweet, thank goodness – I don’t think I could drink an actual Maitai any more unless I was on a tropical beach somewhere. It also had Brugal 1888, along with yuzu liqueur, demerara syrup, and orange juice.

Moving on to Fort Myers… Shift Coffee is a tiny spot in an apartment building in the northern part of town, and it’s legit, with beans from two small roasters, one from Florida and one from New York, available as drip coffee or espresso. The blend they were using the day I was there was better as espresso, at least. The space is small, with three two-tops and a couch.

McGregor’s is a perfectly fine breakfast spot that cooked the eggs I ordered perfectly to over medium, but everything else was kind of meh. The server – who saw me doing the Spelling Bee and couldn’t wait to tell me about how she does Strands and Wordle but the Connections puzzle is too hard – recommended their biscuits, which they make from scratch every morning, but that was a hard miss. It was drier than a scone, and I do not understand how so many places fuck up a simple southern biscuit. Alton Brown’s got a great recipe. So does my employer’s Cooking site, although I think biscuits are best with a shortening/butter mix. Just don’t overcook them.

Backyard Social is a great concept for a space – there are eight food trucks ringing the building, which is open on all sides, with a huge bar in the middle and some games for families to play, although the crowd definitely leaned a little older given all the alcohol involved. I got a blackened grouper sandwich at Atlas Dock Company; the fish was fantastic but for some reason they sliced the fish instead of serving the whole fillet, which meant it was constantly falling out of the sandwich. I don’t know if it just fell apart on the grill and they were trying to salvage it; it tasted great but I must have looked like a lunatic while trying to eat it. (I’d read that Dixie’s was the best fish spot in Fort Myers, but when I called before driving down that way they said the wait was an hour and a half.)

Cubans Be Like is hidden in an outdoor mall, tucked back off the main walkway, and there are enough empty storefronts there that I’m impressed they get any business at all. I saw they had lechon asado (Cuban roast pork) on the menu and I hadn’t had that in years, so I figured I’d give it a shot, and the plate easy had two servings’ worth of pork on it. I am not a large man and I don’t eat a ton of red meat any more, so maybe my scale is different, but that was a ridiculously generous portion. It was well cooked, but oddly a little underpowered; the pork is marinated in a garlic-citrus base and tends to be sharp, tangy, and salty, but this lechon was the mildest thing on the plate – I got the black beans & rice and sweet plantains as sides, and those were both much more flavorful. I’ve had much better.

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→ March 28, 2025
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Stations of the Tide.

Michael Swanwick’s Stations of the Tide won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1990, beating out one of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vor novels, Barrayar, and a William Gibson novel, The Difference Engine. Swanwick combines elements of fantasy and science fiction, including a significant amount of speculative writing that seems especially prescient today given the rise of (highly questionable) AI-powered bots. It’s a shame it’s undone by a trap that many white male sci-fi writers have fallen into: Swanwick is obsessed with sex, and writes about it like a teenaged boy.

Stations of the Tide takes place on a planet called Miranda, where the human civilization faces a catastrophic flood once a generation, for which they must prepare and evacuate while the ocean devours the land, destroying property but also helping renew the ecosystem. A rogue calling himself a wizard is promising residents that he can cast spells to help them survive the inundation, such as giving them gills to breathe underwater, and the interplanetary authorities suspect that he has absconded with proscribed technology stolen from them, so they send an agent, simply called the bureaucrat, to Miranda to track him down and retrieve it. This sets in motion a story that’s a blend between a spy novel and a paranoid thriller, moving through various settlements in tropical areas of Miranda that evoked Apocalypse Now for its contrast of a lush backdrop for social desolation.

The actual spy story within Stations of the Tide is its strength: The bureaucrat learns very early on that he can’t trust anyone, and his suspicions only deepen the further along he goes – except for any time a woman tries to seduce him, because he’s easier than Sunday morning. The small cadre of agents with and around him keep the circle of intrigue limited, as it’s clear early in the novel that someone has helped the wizard, named Gregorian, keep track of the investigation and the bureaucrat’s movements, but it’s not clear who’s behind it.

Swanwick’s speculations on technology include the use of holographic projections of people to allow them to be in more than one place at once, with the avatars able to act semi-autonomously and to even survive their creators. Not only does this allow the bureaucrat and his colleagues to work along several paths at once, but it allows the protagonist to operate across several (virtual) planes to try to figure out who’s double-crossing him. I imagine in 1990 this technology seemed fantastical, but today it seems possible, if undesirable, with Big Tech’s twin obsessions with LLMs and virtual worlds. Swanwick’s mind might have moved faster than his pen here, though, as his conceit of never using the bureaucrat’s name along with the fact that all of these officials using the technology are men can make it extremely confusing when real people and avatars are conversing.

The sex in this book veers from the unintentionally comic to the creepy, and it destroys the hallucinatory vibe that infuses most of the novel. Swanwick seems unable to conceive a female character who isn’t promiscuous, and the women in this book all exist almost entirely in their relationship to men. His descriptions of sex are awkward, at best, and betray the teenager’s fascination with anatomy over emotions, made worse by Swanwick repeatedly using the word “vagina” when he means something else. It reminded me of some of the worst sci-fi and fantasy novels I’ve read, like the later Dune sequels when Frank Herbert introduced the Honored Matres, or the first Game of Thrones book, or Snow Crash. Stations clearly came out in a different era, and it has aged extremely poorly.

There are some strong scenes in the book involving the bureaucrat and Gregorian’s agents, along with a reasonable climactic scene that uses something I probably should have seen coming but didn’t to resolve the final confrontation. Swanwick allows the bureaucrat to consider the moral implications of his actions and the authorities’ choices to limit technology transfer to these colony worlds, a theme that appeared here and there in the novel while becoming more prevalent near the end, opening up possible interpretations around paternalistic government, colonization, and regulations that tied the room together at the very end. It was enough to bump me up a half-grade or so, figuratively, to the point where I’d recommend the book if you don’t mind the bad sex writing. There’s enough suspense here to keep the story moving, and it turns out in the end that Swanwick did have some larger points to make. It’s not good enough to get me to pick up more of his work, but was worth the time I spent reading it.

Next up: Nell Zink’s The Wallcreeper.

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→ March 27, 2025
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Road House.

I don’t watch a lot of bad movies, by design. I’m not a professional critic, so I don’t have to watch any of them, and it’s only fun to pick a movie apart once in a blue moon. I’m not talking about when I watch an acclaimed movie and just don’t like it, but about a movie everyone kind of agrees is bad, one that shows the studio behind it thinks that audiences are dumb and will fork over cash for anything.

After seeing a few clips on TikTok from the movie Road House that made me laugh, I figured I’d give it a whirl, since it was free for me on Amazon Prime Video anyway. It’s a bad movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Dalton (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a former UFC fighter who now shows up at amateur fight nights as a ringer to make some cash; after one of those, he’s approached by Frankie (Jessica Williams), owner of a bar in the Florida Keys, who says she’s looking for a bouncer to deal with a group of thugs who are tearing up her bar night after night. Of course, he’s not interested, but after he tries to kill himself and bails at the last second, we see him arriving on a bus out in Frankie’s little town, where he’s greeted by a precocious teenager who runs a used book store with her dad, and then meets one uninteresting character after another before the fightin’ starts. Eventually, it turns out that the thugs aren’t just randomly harassing the Road House, but are doing so at the behest of an obnoxious nepo baby named Ben Brandt (Billy Magnussen), so Dalton’s in deeper than he thought.

There isn’t much plot here beyond that, and that’s fine; I’d argue that Road House would be worse if they made the story any more complicated. This is an action movie, and action movies need two things: action, and quips. Gyllenhaal turns out to be really good at delivering some funny soliloquies before beating the shit out of people; the screenwriters didn’t make him some sort of closet intellectual – when Frankie says that Hemingway once drank at the Road House, Dalton isn’t impressed and just says “good for you!” – but made him just smart and funny enough to make him an interesting character to watch. He’s got a back story, of course, and we get most but not all of the explanation, which is also fine because who cares? Not every character in every movie needs a tragic back story.

After Dalton dispatches the first wave of thugs, Brandt’s imprisoned father, irritated that his son can’t get the job done, hires a guy simply named Knox (Conor McGregor, who lost a civil rape case in November), who has several tattoos on him that read “Knox” in case he forgets who he is. He’s indestructible, extremely violent, and permanently smiling. He’s also got quips. Dalton can’t handle him the way he handled all of the Brandts’ other goons, so we’re heading for a final showdown between the two of them for the fate of the Road House.

Gyllenhaal is a blast in this movie; he looks like he’s having fun, and he’s got that brooding charm that’s a cliché across action films, but everything about the performance is restrained (other than the beatings, which involve a lot of mediocre CGI). There’s a natural cadence to his delivery that sounds even more authentic when he’s surrounded by people who either can’t act or were told to act like they couldn’t act; nearly everyone else in this film is just bad, even when delivering minor lines. There’s just enough depth to Dalton’s character to make him compelling, and to make you understand why he always seems to stop short of the critical hit in every fight.

I also regret to report that Conor McGregor is really quite good as Knox. The character is a psycho, and McGregor seems to have no problem whatsoever slipping into that archetype. I wonder why. His ridiculous swagger plays well in fight scenes and regular ones, and he’s pretty good at delivering the quips we expect from this sort of character. Even his gait is funny. The film’s a year old, so I don’t think this is a big spoiler any more, but Knox survives the film and I imagine he’s going to be in the reported sequel, but I hope they get someone other than McGregor to play him – or just make up a thinly-veiled version of him to be the new antagonist.

Everything else about the movie is kind of bad. The dialogue from any character other than Dalton is stilted and overexpository; nobody talks like these people and I’m not referring to their accents. There’s so much explaining how this particular hamlet is a small place and everyone knows everyone and things are different here that I assume the screenwriters (or whoever cleaned up the script) think the audience is even dumber than the usual one. Did you catch that the previous three bouncers Frankie used at the bar had names starting with A, B, and C, before capital-D Dalton? Or did you guess who the sheriff actually was before it was revealed? I was mildly grateful that they kept the obvious romantic pairing at a very superficial level – they chose to make Dalton fairly uninterested in the character, who I haven’t even mentioned because she is so boring, which would have just been a distraction from the main throughline anyway.

So yeah, Road House is a bad movie. But I was entertained the whole time. I didn’t even mention that there’s some great live music from bands playing at the Road House, often up there while there’s mayhem a few feet away, or that one of the thugs ends up part of a great running gag with Dalton. It’s the best bad movie I’ve seen in a while. (Oh, and I’ve never seen the original, if anyone’s curious.)

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→ March 26, 2025
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Adolescence.

For three episodes, the new Netflix series Adolescence delivers some of the best television content I’ve ever seen, both in writing and in performances. Each episode is recorded as one continuous shot, and walks us through a different hour (roughly) in a different day across the case of a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female classmate. That fourth episode, however, makes some curious editorial choices, shifting the focus to characters who probably don’t belong at the center of this kind of story, and even some strong acting can’t totally salvage the conclusion.

The first episode opens with two police officers, DI Bascombe (Ashley “Asher D” Walters) and DS Frank (Faye Marsay), as they prepare to storm a suburban house to arrest a suspect, 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper, in his first film role). We follow them in the police van to the station, through processing and the initial interrogation, and it’s only near the very end of the episode that we learn any details about the crime and why the police think he did it. The second episode, taking place two days later, focuses on the two cops and their investigation, particularly DI Bascombe’s interest in learning a motive. Because much of the theme of the series is the social difficulties that teenagers face as a result of social media, this turns out to be a significant episode for our understanding of Jamie’s potential motives and what his life was like before the murder.

The third episode is the big one, the one that’s going to win all the awards for writing and for its two actors, as nearly the entire hour takes place in a room at the juvenile detention center where Jamie is being held as he awaits trial. Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty) is an independent psychologist hired by his attorneys to provide a report on his state of mind and understanding of everything that’s happening; it’s not their first such appointment, so they can jump right into the conversation, and it becomes heated and intense as Jamey displays an inability to regulate his emotions that we haven’t seen previously. It’s a tour de force performance from Cooper, as the one-shot gimmick requires him to shapeshifter from petulant teenager into a demon who can’t contain his rage and frustration in a matter of seconds. It ends on an extremely powerful note, maybe the defining moment of the series.

That fourth episode, though, is a letdown, even though series co-creator Stephen Graham, who plays Jamie’s father Eddie, delivers a strong performance as this episode’s protagonist. The camera is on him, his wife, and their daughter for the entire hour, focusing on the aftereffects of Jamie’s arrest, which of course has upended their lives and made them pariahs in the neighborhood. There’s even a horrifying and too-accurate scene where a big-box hardware store employee recognizes Eddie and reveals that he thinks Jamie is innocent, citing a bunch of the counterfactual nonsense you might encounter in the Qanon-adjacent corners of the internet. It’s such a reflection of the world in which a third of the United States seems to be living, one totally disconnected from reality, willing to ignore the obvious facts in favor of lunatic conspiracy theories.

This episode makes a choice to center Jamie’s family, which continues a theme of the entire series, which is that the family of the victim, Katie, doesn’t exist. We never see Katie’s parents, or any grieving family members. The closest we get is her friend. This even echoes comments from DS Frank in episode 2 about how a murder like this tends to cast the spotlight on the killer, not the victim, only to have the victim and her family erased from the series, especially the last half. The entire focus in the final hour of Adolescence is on how hard this has all been on Jamie’s parents and his sister. And this has been done before: it’s the entire theme of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsey’s excellent but almost unwatchable adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel about the mother of a boy who murders a bunch of his classmates at high school. That film is an incisive portrait of a woman tormented by guilt over her parenting, whether her decisions somehow led her son to commit this atrocity, whether she did enough to try to stop him when it was clear that something about him was off – and why her husband wouldn’t listen. Adolescence doesn’t grapple with its perpetrator’s parents at anywhere near the same depth, which is an acceptable choice if the script also chose to acknowledge that there is another family dealing with an even greater grief. Graham and his co-writer Jack Thorne chose instead to focus only on Jamie’s family, and that undercuts so much of what the series aimed to accomplish. There’s way too much good in the first three-quarters of the series for this particular choice to undo it; I just kept waiting for them to show Katie’s family, somehow, and the failure to do so took something away from the series for me.

(Apropos of nothing, I could have sworn Jemma Redgrave appeared in the initial scene of the raid on Jamie’s house, but she’s not credited anywhere. I’m curious if anyone else thought they spotted her.)

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